Perennial
by PlanetOfTheWeepingWillow
Summary: Arthur visits Hogwarts urgently, but not for pressing news or to stay. He simply wants to enjoy the present. One-shot, short story.


_I do not own Hetalia or Harry Potter. _

Arthur, or England, or Britain (whatever you wish to call him) marched through the train station, warmed by the constant bustle of people and their kind words to arriving relatives. His trench coat fluttering vaguely at his heels and he smelled of tea and almonds. He stopped between station 9 and station 10, checked over both shoulders and shrugging. He buried his hands deeper into his pockets and passed through the column, into the station 9 3/4. The familiar tingle hardly brought a smile to his lips.

He wandered through the clots of wizards, like he was the sole healthy blood cell in a clogged artery, urgently trying to do its work and being torn apart in the process.

A short, redheaded woman bumped into him and started apologizing immediately. She had just been speaking with her daughter and multiple sons, by the looks of it, and Arthur smiled warmly. She gazed into his face and felt some sort of bond between them.

He looked down at her with a sandy, slightly freckled face that was framed by choppy blonde hair. He had an average face and an average uneven smile. But his eyes.

His eyes were emeralds, the color of freshly rained upon trees, of grass, of good summer memories. The pupils were so black, locking away the bleak and the bad from the pure green of his eyes that pulled the woman in so endlessly she felt as though she were drowning.

Arthur hardly noticed her staring and simply waved it off and continued on. His heels clacked against the hard ground. The sleek black train puffed out heavy clouds and he stopped. The kids began filing in, talking loudly and waving at their parents. Several mothers looked on the verge of tears, fathers looked immensely proud, and that red headed woman cast Arthur one last glance before fussing over her children again.

It was not the vast array of red hair and freckles that caught Arthur's eye. It was the little black sheep caught in the mix. There was a lanky, raven-haired boy standing near a slightly taller one.

Potter.

Potter was, of course, with the Weasley family. Arthur knew the families of England as though they were his family. And, in a way, they were.

Arthur was possessed by the sudden desire to approach the Potter boy and tell him of his grave future. Arthur could see, if he wanted to, the boy's whole life from the moment he was hardly even a baby to the time he died.

What held Arthur back was the sudden urgency in his belly, the sudden urgency to do what he had come in the first place. It had curled up in his stomach and lay there like a hard rock, until it burst to life and gripped his head, telling him "DO GET YOUR MIND OUT OF THE GUTTER OLD BOY."

His temper suddenly rose at no one but himself. Thus he moved onwards and into the train. It was very strange to see a grown man like him (at this moment they did not know there was a teacher snoring calmly in the back) on such a train. But he looked very grouchy and very important that the smaller of the students instantly decided on being very polite.

He smiled meekly at Potter as he passed and he patted the boy's back softly, telling him without words that the boy was doing fine. Potter looked up, but Arthur was gone. He passed it off as a student bustling past him.

Arthur sat in his designated cabin, reading a novel and considering the meaning of life.

As the day droned on in silence, Arthur fell asleep until the dark shadowed creatures that made one's skin crawl and feel sapped of energy infested the building. Arthur opened a wary eye. Only one student, a 5th year with terrible acne that resembled bug bites, witnessed what happened next.

The man, half asleep, sat up and shooed the dementor away. The dementor did not move towards nor away from him. He simply stood there. Arthur glowered, clearly very annoyed. He started to pull some sort of invisible force towards him. The dementor, suddenly going in for an attack found that it could not. It turned and fled towards the end of the train, trailing gloom and doom in its wake.

The student, slightly dumfounded, turned away and cowered in terror like the rest of the students.

Finally the train pulled up. Arthur exited first. Waving hello to McGonagall and entering the building. He neared and whispered something. The severe woman nodded and answered without moving her lips. "His study."

She found something odd about the whisper. Though she could clearly hear English words form and make sense, but the whisper was so like the whisper of trees in the breeze, of a mellow river, of a reed rattled by wind, of snow falling to the ground… It was, McGonagall concluded, absolutely pleasing to the ear.

Arthur clambered up the troublesome steps and met who he needed in the middle. The tall, elderly man with half-moon spectacles and a beard like a wispy cloud reaching low, smiled at Arthur.

"I have heard much about you, sir." He said softly.

Arthur chuckled, a low sound. "Do not call me 'sir', the students will give us odd looks."

"And let them," Dumbledore responded mildly and sighed. "Now if you will let me pass…"

Arthur nodded and back tracked. He still wore his muggle clothing: a beige trench coat and boots. His hands were still in his pockets.

Once at the bottom of the steps, Dumbledore raised a brow and turned to him, awaiting an answer with his finger tips pressed together.

Arthur relaxed his shoulders and looked evenly at Dumbledore, several strands of pale hair falling below his brow. A lock was curled in his bangs, so that it curved in an upside down arc back to his head. Dumbledore noticed whenever Arthur averted his eyes. "Well," he began, licking his lips and glancing at the venerable wizard, "I am simply here to look. Things will change so quickly."

"What? Just to look? Not to warn or to give me something?" Dumbledore mused.

Shaking his head, Arthur pulled a small box from his pocket and handed it to Dumbledore. Dumbledore opened it and examined the nimble object inside.

"When that Potter boy breaks the one you have, use this one. I feel it is far more effective."

Dumbledore nodded and pocketed the box, thanking Arthur. "Well I better be off. Will you stay?"

Arthur did not respond for several moments, listening to the patter of student feet starting to flow into the school. The smells of excitement and books and a very faint trace of sweets flickered through the halls like ghosts. He smiled.

"It's an excellent night."

He turned and left.

"Oh now hold on, you spent all day on that train for only this small conversation." Dumbledore called after him suspiciously.

Arthur nodded. "I wanted to finish my novel. I won't have time to read for a while."

Then, he headed out into the night. The stars, shining hard and bright in the sky like twinkling diamonds. He glanced at them, the warm summer air ruffling his hair and sending that upside-down lock back to its place. He closed his eyes.

The present was a good time to be, he thought.


End file.
